Chapter 58: Choreography
Being someone who thought quickly on his feet, Rocky knew that putting in blind effort into clearing the quest was going to yield no results, as they needed information and a solid strategy to clear the floor one quest with the highest efficiency.
" Village chief, does the village already have a reserve of some chopped wood that we can use to mend the wall?" Rocky asked, as the village chief shook his head in dismay, replying "No, all the wood within the village is finely chopped and is used to cook dinner. It won't be helpful for rebuilding the village walls"
" I see…. If you don't mind, can you tell me what sort of monsters you are most wary of?" Rocky asked, as depending on his answer he intended to formulate an appropriate strategy.
"There are rarely any large predators in these parts. The most danger we face is from monsters like Earth Slimes or Poison Slimes, that corrode our village walls by their highly corrosive gelatinous bodies.
While it's not hard to deal with them, we like to have a good night's sleep knowing that there won't be random slimes showing up in the village" The village chief answered as Rocky nodded his head and asked him one last question " You use wood as a fuel to cook, but I only see grassy fields nearby, so where exactly is the wood coming from?"
"About 2 kilometers north of here is the Abandoned forest, we mostly get the required wood from there" The village chief answered as Rocky finally understood exactly what he needed to do for this mission.
Turning towards Erin and Buhara, he said "Buhara, you need to go and chop as many trees for us as you can.
Me and Erin will survey the village in the meanwhile, marking spots that need repairs and prepare a list of roughly what size of wood we would need for which repair.
Then we will come join you and help you carry the wood back to the village" Rocky said as Buhara borrowed some wood chopping axes from the villagers and headed off towards the abandoned forest.
Meanwhile, Erin and Rocky began surveying the village walls, marking the spots where the wood had either rotten or had been corroded by Earth Slimes, as after 40 minutes they completed their inspection, identifying 15 spots that needed repair.
The villages defenses were made from a series of interconnected wooden pikes, sort of like a fence and about 8 of them needed a full replacement as they had considerable structural damage, while the other 7 only needed minor repairs that could be done superficially.
"We should not need more than two trees worth of wood to complete all the repairs.
If we measure the size of the full sized pikes, maybe we can size the wood near the abandoned forest and only carry the finished product here, " Rocky suggested, as Erin readily agreed to his plan.
Thanks to Rocky's structured approach to the quest, the trio did not waste any unnecessary time in deciding the best approach to the quest, as they only followed Rocky's plan wholeheartedly.
Borrowing two more axes from the villagers, Rocky and Erin made their way towards the abandoned forest to meet-up with Buhara, as they were brimming with focus and energy to complete the quest.
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( Meanwhile Sophia )
Sophia was teleported within the abandoned forest and she received a quest to collect Five Blue Lily Flowers from within the forest alongside her teammates.
It was a rather easy quest, with the trio finding the first two flowers within the first 30 minutes of the quest starting, however, they went on a dry spell afterwards as no matter how much they walked around, they found no more Blue Lily flowers.
" I'm kind of frustrated that we haven't found a single flower in the last half hour, however, I'm just so happy to be able to do a quest alongside the Champion Of Poseidon, that the pleasure of your company far outweighs the frustration" Sain Erina, one of Sophia's two teammates.
" I know right! I thought that the Champion Of Poseidon would have an attitude of superiority around her. But no…. Sophia, you're so humble!" Said Christina, as the two girls heaped praises on Sophia.
" Haha, you girls praise me too much, so what if I'm the Champion of Poseidon? I'm just a fresher like you both as well" Sophia said, keeping up her fake persona as although she pretended to be humble, she did not mean a single word coming out of her mouth.
She did not view her teammates as equals, in fact she was not even worried that they were going to die very soon, as all her attention was focused on herself being stabbed, as very soon she was going to take a big blow to her chest.
" Oh look, a third flower!" Christina said, as she rushed over towards the third flower that she just spotted, causing Erina to yelp in excitement.
" Yayy! A third flower-" Erina said, as she jumped up and down in joy, as the last sight that she saw before her death was the image of Christina plucking a Blue Lily Flower, as soon after she felt her vision going black as she lost control over her muscles as she fainted.
*THUD*
*THUD*
One after another, both Erina and Christina hit the floor unconscious as both of them had a poison dart sticking out of their backs.
"Took you long enough-" said Sophia as she looked at how much time had passed since they had gotten to floor one and frowned because the assassin's were slightly late.
" Apologies miss Sophia. But our starting point was too further away from your location. Unfortunately it took us a while to get here" One of the hooded assassin's said, as he spoke in a raspy and crisp voice.
"You have poisoned these two, but the moment they die the principal would be alerted. I hope you have set the dosage appropriately" Sophia said, as she knew for a fact that if the girls died before their mission was completed, Principal Liam would rush to this spot and their mission would turn out to be a failure.
"Don't worry Miss Sophia, they won't die for another five hours, we have set the dosage very carefully.
We will definitely not let this mission fail" Said the same assassin as before as Sophia nodded in approval.
" Okay, prepare the crime scene, it should look like I tried to fight you guys off but failed. Make it as realistic as you can-" Sophia said as the group of assassin's planted a fake dart in the soil below where Sophia was standing, setting the crime scene up in a way that it looked like they wanted to poison her as well, but she dodged reflexively.
They then choreographed the surroundings to make it look like Sophia had a skirmish with them before running for her life as in the process of fleeing, her backpack was torn apart by an chasing assassin's dagger as she lost all the contents in her bag including her emergency button, only barely clinging on to life.
" We have located the Champion Of Gemini to be roughly 3 kilometers from here, please run towards him in a way that makes it seem like we fought all the way from here till you reach him" The lead assassin said, as Sophia nodded and played her part in this play to perfection as she began a fake chase scene.
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